Archive for the ‘Recession’ Category

When Obama ran for president I warned that the man is a dogmatic leftist and Americans — those with any sense, that is — would rue the day he sat in the Oval Office. Since then I, along with many others, also pointed out that if unchecked his policies would result in economic stagnation and inflation. Well, this now seems to be the case. Read the rest of this entry »

Bernanke’s monetary shenanigans are building up a host of problems, domestic and international. In the next 8 months or so he plans to pump nearly $900 million dollars into the US economy with the intention of lowering interest rates to the point where business borrowing and consumer spending will be sufficiently stimulated to trigger a recovery. (If only it were that simple.)

Americans are still regaled with tales that Obama’s spending binge and massive deficits are vital to an economic recovery. As evidence many of his supporters are citing Roosevelt’s New Deal as proof that deficits work. In fact, the New Deal was an economic disaster that kept the US in depression until WW II restored full employment.

What is truly remarkableis that any Democrats at all will survive the mid-term elections given that there probably has never been a more incompetent and dogmatic administration than Obama’s White House carnival. What passes for economic policy is a complete shambles, and Bernanke’s crude Keynesianism is only aggravating the country’s pain.

According to Alan Blinder “the present danger is not inflation but deflation”. His pal Bernanke has driven the Fed’s funds rate down to zero while giving the US economy an unprecedented increase in its monetary base. Not satisfied with that he is now apparently preparing an astonishing $2 trillion monetary expansion — and Blinder worries about deflation!

Last year I explained that there would no recovery and that manufacturing was heading for a slowdown. Both of these predictions came to pass. I am forever stressing that the boom-bust cycle is caused by monetary expansion largely consisting of phony bank deposits. In plain English, we call this credit expansion.

I warned from day one that an Obama presidency would be a disaster for the US economy (not that it’s doing the body politic any good). Let us first clear the air about who is to blame for starting the recession. The culprit is lousy economics. If it were not for the central banks’ appalling lack of genuine monetary and capital theory the boom-bust cycle would be a thing of the past. (The early classical economists had a better understanding of the banking system and it affect on the economy than any central bank’s ‘research’ department.)

The news is out: things ain’t getting better, which means America’s phony media will have to start digging up more excuses for the Democrats’ failed economic policies. Alana Semuels, Harvard graduate and a ‘reporter” for the Los Angeles Times has come up with a real old chestnut: technological unemployment. (She gets an A for effort and an F minus for lack of imagination.)

Following the view of Irving Fisher some economists argue that deflation and the following depression is the result of over indebtedness. Fisher regarded over-indebtedness as a situation where the debt is out of line i.e. too big relatively to other economic factors. He held that

The mining boom is making it very clear that the Reserve Bank and our commentariat are unlikely to ever grasp the relationship between inflation and wages. Whenever it appears that wages are rising ‘too’ fast and that a shortage of skilled labour is emerging we are invariably warned that the RBA could be forced to raise interest rates to counter the inflationary effects of wages increases. This is nonsense. The view that rising wages in themselves can have an inflationary impact seems to have its roots in the discredited cost-of-production theory of prices.

Some economic pundits are warning — again — that deflation poses a severe threat to the US economy, despite the fact that Bernanke is desperately trying to create an inflationary-driven recovery. Now back in November 2001 the same siren voices were singing the same seductive tune, even though the Fed was rapidly expanding the money supply.

As soon as Obama threw his hat into the presidential arena I warned that if he were to win the consequences for the US economy would be very grave. Time — and a very short time at that — has borne out this prediction. Rather than stimulate the economy I warned that his policies would — if not reversed — lead to economic stagnation. At best a situation where the rate of capital accumulation barely keeps abreast of population growth thereby preventing a significant rise in real wages. This, I argued, would be due to the massive increase in government misdirecting resources to consumption.